Posted on 11/14/2007 6:36:43 PM PST by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Small, rocky planets that could resemble the Earth or Mars may be forming around a star in the Pleiades star cluster, astronomers reported on Wednesday.
One of the stars in the cluster, also known as the Seven Sisters, is surrounded by an extraordinary number of hot dust particles that could be the "building blocks of planets" said Inseok Song, a staff scientist at NASA's Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology.
"This is the first clear evidence for planet formation in the Pleiades, and the results we are presenting may well be the first observational evidence that terrestrial planets like those in our solar system are quite common," said Joseph Rhee of the University of California Los Angeles, who led the study.
There is "hundreds of thousands of times as much dust as around our sun," said Benjamin Zuckerman, a UCLA professor of physics and astronomy. "The dust must be the debris from a monster collision, a cosmic catastrophe."
The team used two telescopes to spot the dust, and report their findings in Astrophysical Journal.
Located about 400 light years away in the constellation of Taurus, the Pleiades is one of the best known star clusters and among the closest to Earth. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, about 5.8 trillion miles.
"The cluster actually contains some 1,400 stars," said Song.
Song said the dust can accumulate into comets and small asteroid-size bodies, and then clump together to form planetary embryos, and finally full-fledged planets.
"In the process of creating rocky, terrestrial planets, some objects collide and grow into planets, while others shatter into dust; we are seeing that dust," Song said.
"Our observations indicate that terrestrial planets similar to those in our solar system are probably quite common," Zuckerman added.
Researchers have observed about 200 planets around stars outside our solar system but none are as small as Earth and just one, spotted earlier this year, appears potentially capable of supporting life.
(Reporting by Maggie Fox, editing by Will Dunham and Stuart Grudgings)
An artist's rendering of what the environment around Pleiades star HD 23514 might look like as two planets collide. Small, rocky planets that could resemble the Earth or Mars may be forming around a star in the Pleiades star cluster, astronomers reported on Wednesday. (Gemini Observatory/Lynette R. Cook/Reuters)
Pink Pleiades, The Seven Sisters, also known as the Pleiades star cluster, seem to float on a bed of feathers in a new infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Clouds of dust sweep around the stars, swaddling them in a cushiony veil.
The Pleiades, located more than 400 light-years away in the Taurus constellation, are the subject of many legends and writings. Greek mythology holds that the flock of stars was transformed into celestial doves by Zeus to save them from a pursuant Orion. The 19th-century poet Alfred Lord Tennyson described them as "glittering like a swarm of fireflies tangled in a silver braid."
The Pleiades have been my starting point for finding comet Holmes.
Fine. But I still want my flying car! It’s nearly 2008, Scientists. You’ve been promising me one since the mid-1960’s.
I’ll definitely need it to explore these new planets. ;)
I haven’t spotted that thing yet.
Skyandtelescope.com has a good interactive sky chart to give you a good idea where to look. It doesn’t look lake a normal comet though.
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/
Thanks, I can find the Pleiades no problem. my eyes ain’t what they used to be tho.. I’ll have to see what the sky looks like.. yecchhh, I can barely make out three of the sisters.
Maybe that'll be a Subaru, which is the Japanese term for the Pleiades...
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"Spitzer Sees the Aftermath of a Planetary Collision"
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